Knowledge is power! - The Power of Search Engines?
- Date: 2007-08-24 - Word Count: 402
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The American company SPOCK has recently launched a new search engine :SPOCK (public beta) which can track down the names of the world's six billions people. The idea of Jay Bhatti, founder of Spock.com, is to create a people search engine to help its users finding and discovering literally everybody on the web.
Google, Yahoo or Ask.com already do provide a similar service but they only work well if the person in question has a rather unique name, otherwise they have difficulties to filter out relevant information. Spock.com wants to do better and overcome this difficulty by delivering specific results to the people requests.
How does it work ?
When you are looking for a specific person - you enter the full name and the results will come up in the form of profiles. These information is found online from social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.
Spock.com is not the first search engine doing this - Zoominfo was the precursor. In 2001, this site gathered informations from websites and was used by recruitment companies or sales people who could subscribed to the service. In 2005 a service for conducting personal searches was made available for the public. At the beginning these new websites were a way for headhunters to review job applications but now it is used by everyone who is trying to find information about somebody. As simple as this.
The danger of these sites!
Even if the concept is very interesting, it can be dangerous - as we all know it is not just us searching for an old schoolmate. EVERYBODY has access to this data and can search for a person, find every information about him or her online.
This raises several issues: first of all - privacy , for example if you don't want that your headhunter knows if you are gay or Muslim, cat lover or dog hater...
This kind of application will create a massive catalogue listing every person on earth and everybody can look into it. It invates your private space. There is also the likely risk that the information available is being abused. This has already been confirmed from public figures. Give it a try, type "Mel Gibson" on Spock.com, the result will show the actor among the most famous anti-semitic people behind Hitler and Osama bin laden and described as a drunk driver.
So be careful when you add something on your Facebook or MySpace profile, your Boss/ Neighbor/ Dad/ Husband/ Children/... could see it!
Google, Yahoo or Ask.com already do provide a similar service but they only work well if the person in question has a rather unique name, otherwise they have difficulties to filter out relevant information. Spock.com wants to do better and overcome this difficulty by delivering specific results to the people requests.
How does it work ?
When you are looking for a specific person - you enter the full name and the results will come up in the form of profiles. These information is found online from social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.
Spock.com is not the first search engine doing this - Zoominfo was the precursor. In 2001, this site gathered informations from websites and was used by recruitment companies or sales people who could subscribed to the service. In 2005 a service for conducting personal searches was made available for the public. At the beginning these new websites were a way for headhunters to review job applications but now it is used by everyone who is trying to find information about somebody. As simple as this.
The danger of these sites!
Even if the concept is very interesting, it can be dangerous - as we all know it is not just us searching for an old schoolmate. EVERYBODY has access to this data and can search for a person, find every information about him or her online.
This raises several issues: first of all - privacy , for example if you don't want that your headhunter knows if you are gay or Muslim, cat lover or dog hater...
This kind of application will create a massive catalogue listing every person on earth and everybody can look into it. It invates your private space. There is also the likely risk that the information available is being abused. This has already been confirmed from public figures. Give it a try, type "Mel Gibson" on Spock.com, the result will show the actor among the most famous anti-semitic people behind Hitler and Osama bin laden and described as a drunk driver.
So be careful when you add something on your Facebook or MySpace profile, your Boss/ Neighbor/ Dad/ Husband/ Children/... could see it!
Related Tags: myspace, search engine, facebook, spock
Anja began her career in Information Technology more than 11 years ago as a Graphic and Web Designer. As one of the project managers, Anja was responsible for the launch of the international website for the car manufacturer BMW (www.bmw.com) and has also worked on web projects for national television in Germany (SWR) and the DTI in the UK. Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles
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